Tuesday, 25 February 2014

Although I’ve been in King’s College Chapel in Cambridge
several times over the years ‒admiring
the architecture, the furnishings and the superb Adoration of the
Magi by Rubens ‒ I’d
never been to a service there.

To be honest, I’ve never much enjoyed recordings made there
– the resonant acoustic seems to turn everything into a sonic mist – but Matins
last Sunday was spectacularly wonderful. The famous choir, directed by Stephen
Cleobury, was on top form, and made full allowance for the fact that the music
lingers in the air far longer than in most environments.

Perhaps most memorable were two pieces by Simon Preston – a
dazzling Toccata as organ voluntary and a setting of the Jubilate that fully
endorsed the inspiring words for a multinational congregation:

Saturday, 22 February 2014

Some years ago I was commissioned by a client, a major
multinational, to dig into the stories surrounding ten major innovations that
had taken place in the company over the past decade.

How had the innovations come about? Who was involved? What
sorts of personalities were involved? Who had had the original ideas behind
them?

We conducted one-to-one depth interviews with everyone
involved and it gradually became clear that the answer to that last question –
the originators ‒
was that they had each left the company. Some had been fired. Some had chosen
to leave. Several had set up their own businesses.

They were all described by surviving colleagues as highly
creative, but difficult. Unable to fit in. Resistant to rules, systems,
processes. Difficult.

And the company, which had previously recruited these kinds
of people on a regular basis, now effectively excluded them at source.

There emerged consensus from the survivors that the company was better off
without them, these mavericks. So much easier for them – and for us ‒ to be elsewhere. What I
noticed over succeeding years was that senior managers in the company became
highly conscious of the lack of breakthrough innovations now.

Wednesday, 19 February 2014

The eviction of Kevin Pietersen from England’s cricket team
is a failure of leadership. No more, no less.

In any organisation, getting the best out of the average
performers is useful, but hardly a major challenge. It’s getting consistent, peak
performance out of the brilliant ones that is the real test.

So often that test is compounded by the fact that the really
outstanding ones come with considerable baggage. They can be moody, imperious,
changeable, demanding, self-centred (and self-important), aggressive…

That’s why leaders are paid lots and take on the responsibility.
Turfing out the difficult bastards is only appropriate if they lack talent.

Sunday, 16 February 2014

John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi is by no means a barrel
of laughs. Manipulation and mayhem, torture and murder are the substance of the
thing. So having the audience laugh (heartily? nervously? both?) at the final
slayings of four major characters came as something of a surprise –
just as it did when I last saw the play several decades ago. Did they laugh at
the Blackfriars Theatre in 1612-13, when it was first performed there? I think
it’s entirely possible. Even in an era when life was cheap, it still must have
seemed rather ridiculous.

The Duchess of Malfi is the opening production at the
newly-finished Sam Wanamaker Playhouse at Shakespeare’s Globe. It was always part
of architect Theo Crosby’s conception – an indoor playhouse based on the
earliest surviving design for a theatre in Britain.

Initially it was called the
Inigo Jones, that great English architect of the early seventeenth century
being thought to be its author. When this was felt to be unlikely, it was
described more loosely as the Jacobean Theatre. Then the academic advisors to
the Globe decided that it was probably designed well after the death of James I, more
correctly from the reign of Charles II. The consensus now seems to be that it
was created by Inigo Jones’s pupil and follower, John Webb.

Over the past twenty years it has stood there empty, used
primarily for rehearsal and educational projects. Now it’s fully kitted out, candlelit,
the audience hugger-mugger, a small space for intimate performance. Quite
unique.

Thursday, 13 February 2014

How can I have missed 18 Stafford Terrace for so long? We
went to visit it on Sunday for the first time and it was a revelation.

On a quiet street in Kensington, the house was bought in
1875 by the artist and Punch cartoonist Linley Sambourne, and his family lived
there for the best part of a century, filling it with the eclectic and
fascinating acquisitions of Linley and his successors.

But the most spectacular part of the visit was the performance by
a brilliant unnamed actress as Linley Sambourne’s wife, Marion. She was note
perfect, but who was she?

Monday, 10 February 2014

In an interesting piece on the latest biography of the
composer Johann Sebastian Bach in the New York Review of Books, George B
Stauffer points out that Bach’s first biographer (in 1802), Johann Nicolaus
Forkel, a Geman nationalist portrayed the composer as an ideal German citizen,
while the next, a century later, the theologian Philipp Spitta, focused on the
importance of religion in Bach’s life and work. A more recent biographer, a
professor at Harvard, Christoph Wolff, presented him as an intellectual, a “learned
musician”.

Turning to the newest tome*, Stauffer points out that John
Eliot Gardiner proposes that Bach was an angry man. Although he doesn’t say so
in so many words, the clear implication is that Gardiner himself has anger as a
core driver.

As someone who reads (and writes) a great deal of
biographical stuff, it seems to me that it is inescapable that writers portray
their subjects through their own value system and psychological makeup. Both
conscious and unconscious. Having some awareness of this seems valuable.

Friday, 7 February 2014

I sat next to the great baritone, Sir Thomas Allen, at a
candlelit dinner in the Great Hall at Blackheath. It was a fund-raiser in the
late 1980s. He had just given a wonderful recital with accompanist Roger
Vignoles in the lovely (and already restored) Small Hall.

The Great Hall was still completely unrestored. Hole in the
roof. Pigeons in residence. Candlelit because there was no electricity supply. All the grubby residue evident from
the occupation by the Department for Health and Social Services (who had been
in residence since the Second World War).

I told Sir Tom about the famous musicians who had
played and sung there from the 1890s, when it was built. Paderewski, Kreisler,
Alfred Cortot, Peter Dawson, Elena Gerhardt, Percy Grainger, Dame Clara Butt…

“Who was the last person to sing in this hall?” asked Sir
Tom.

“Well, we think it was the tenor, Heddle Nash,” I replied,
“just before the war and the closure.”

And with that, Tom walked over to Roger Vignoles to ask for
a note, then strolled over towards the stage, turned, and sang the Serenade
from Don Giovanni (his greatest role). Unaccompanied.

Sunday, 2 February 2014

On Facebook Joy Clark reports a reunion of Lintas Sydney
Ladies at the Yum Yum Eatery in beautiful Killcare ‒ and it reminded me of the first stirrings of a
Ladies’ Dining Club at the agency in the mid-1980s.

The problem getting started was not in signing up members,
but rather in deciding where to go. One restaurant would be proposed and rejected.
Then another. And another.

Until, one day, I think it was the somewhat proper Susannah
Throsby (as she was) who announced: “Fuck it, I’ll book it.”

Follow by Email

Welcome

When I started this blog, the posts were mainly about innovation, creativity and leadership matters. So if you want the see those, they are mostly in the earlier years. More recently I've been writing about the arts - music, literature and art itself. I still post from time to time on innovation matters and indeed anything else that intrigues me.

About Me

Roger Neill FRSA, FIoD, is Managing Partner of the innovation consultancy, Per Diem. He was Founding Director of the Centre for Creativity, City University London, and international managing partner for Synectics Corporation, a world leader in innovation and creativity. He writes, speaks and conducts masterclasses and workshops around the world.
Previously Roger worked in marketing communications. For ten years he was with Saatchi & Saatchi and was appointed to the board of directors aged 27. With Lintas (now Lowe) he became chairman in Australia/New Zealand and regional director for Asia/Pacific. He was deputy chairman of WCRS Worldwide in London. Roger was World President of the International Advertising Association 1990-1992.
An expert on the innovators, artists, writers and musicians of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, he helped Sam Wanamaker to re-build Shakespeare's Globe in London. He curated the exhibition Legends: The Art of Walter Barnett for the National Portrait Gallery in Australia. Roger was founder of Sinfonia 21 and chairman of Endymion Ensemble. He started his working life as a professional rock musician.